Thursday, September 9, 2010

Google has been experimenting with real-time search results for a while now. This next generation update for search went officially live today. Google Instant is essentially a search-as-you-type search engine. Instead of suggesting search terms when you type a phrase into the search box, Google Instant immediately starts showing you results the instant you press the very first key!

Google Instant is search-before-you-type. Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.

Here are a few of the core features in Google Instant:

Dynamic Results - Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.

Predictions - One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.

Scroll to search - Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

When you start to type a query, Google pushes the search box to the top of the page and shows a list of suggestions, immediately followed by the search results for the first suggestion. I can just type “im” and get to IMDB almost instantly. The results are lightening fast, faster than the traditional search, and I’m not kidding.

Google Instant will be rolled out in stages, starting on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia. If you reside outside of these regions, you can still try it out from this link:

The feature is only supported on Chrome versions 5 and later, Firefox version 3 and later, Safari version 5 for Mac and Internet Explorer version 8. Also users on domains other than Google.com and Google.ru can only access Google Instant if they are signed in to a Google Account.

Google says that Google Instant will become the core search experience on Google.com, and on the regions it will be rolled out in. Users on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8 will soon have Google Instant turned ON by default on Google’s homepage. If you want to disable the instant-search feature you can do so by clicking on the link “Instant search is on” right next to the search box and disable it.